Page 52 of The Panther's Price

Thalia’s lips parted in a small, unreadable smile.

“Because you’re the fracture point.”

Evryn’s brows knit. “What?”

“You’re not just a symbol, Evryn. You’re a wound. A truth that never got buried deep enough. The Houses built peace on the lie that your bloodline was gone—that the oldest power in the Veil had been extinguished. But you’re proof it wasn’t. Yourexistencecracks the foundation.”

She began to circle slowly, her voice like silk unraveling in the dark.

“Do you know how many factions in the Veil have been waiting for something? Anything? A spark, a thread, a reason to believe that change isn’t just some dead poet’s dream? You’re that reason. You bear the Old Flame. The Mark. You move shadows without command. Youseethrough Veil-warp and glamour like it’s air. You’re what the Queen fears—not because you can kill her, but because youcould replace her.”

Evryn’s throat tightened.

Thalia stopped in front of her. “We don’t want a soldier. We want astorm.A reckoning that no court or House can contain.”

“But I’m not ready,” Evryn said. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I still feel like I’m faking every step.”

“That’s what makes you dangerous,” Thalia said, softer now. “You haven’t been molded by them. Not completely. Your instincts are your own. Untamed. And once they’re honed, once that old magic in your veins stops flickering and starts burning—you won’t need anyone’s permission to take your place.”

Evryn looked down at her hands. The faint shimmer of power pulsed beneath her skin.

She wasn’t just a girl caught in a war anymore. Shewasthe war.

And Thalia? She didn’t want to save her. She wanted tounleashher.

Evryn swallowed hard, the window’s reflection catching her eyes—eyes that no longer looked like a stranger’s, but something ancient clawing its way to the surface.

She didn’t say it, but shefeltit.

The longer she stayed here, the more that coldness took root.

She wasn’t the girl from the Borderlands anymore.

Not the frightened runaway. Not even the girl who had loved Lucien Umbraclaw like a fool.

She was something else now.

And whatever that was… it wanted blood.

TWENTY-THREE

LUCIEN

Lucien had infiltrated worse places.

But none of them had felt like this.

The air inside Crimson Hollow was thick with reverence, soaked in smoke and bone-flame. The rebels had gathered in mass—hooded, silent, faces painted in iron-dust, eyes locked on the ceremony happening in the high courtyard.

And at the center of it all, bathed in red firelight, her skin kissed by moonstone shimmer and the glow of her own damn legend—stood Evryn.

Lucien’s shadows curled tighter around his ankles, every step deliberate. The glamour woven into his coat let him blend, let him move through the perimeter like mist. But even cloaked in magic, even trained by silence itself, his chest still pounded too loud.

She looked changed. Not lost. Not broken.

Hardened.

And she still didn’t know.

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